Farmer's Market, Highland Park Style

While riding the Gold Line home today I finally got to check out the farmer's market in Highland Park, called the "Old L.A. Certified Farmer's Market," which happens every Tuesday just outside the Highland Park Metro Rail station, an extremely convenient location if there ever was one! Right after stepping off the train, I quickly perused the L-shaped market grounds looking for a bite to eat, and maybe some produce to take home. The fruits looked - and tasted, judging from the sample slices - delicious, but a little pricey for my budget. I did get a jack cheese and pepper tamale from one of the food vendor tents, which was considerably larger than the average tamal.

But I actually spent most of my time there chatting with the community folk at the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council's outreach booth. I asked them about what was up with the Southwest Museum, which, since 2003, has been under the guise of the Autry National Center and currently under seismic renovation. To my surprise, they informed me the museum is actually open, but only on Saturdays. I was also introduced to and had a chat with Ruth Anne Tarletz, a former member of the Arroyo Seco Neighborhood Council who currently organized a Northeast L.A. area peace march that got a lot of community participation. Guess that's what I do as a community leader -- talk shop with other community leaders.

My train ride continuing back home was an easy few steps away. It may not be as big as the one in Hollywood every Sunday morning - but then again, what farmer's markets are? - but it's definitely worth checking when you're in the area.

(Re)Birth of a Mural

Artists Eye One (left) and Caché (2nd right)

hard at work on the new mural.

While going down my street on Sunday I discovered a rebirth of the recently-defaced Caché mural on Heliotrope and Melrose. The incident not only created a neighborhood crapstorm, but apparently caught the attention of Metblogs L.A. and the L.A. Weekly. Not long after, my friend Enci Box contacted her friend Caché, the mural's artist, on the deal. Apparently the artist is currently living with his girlfriend in Massachusetts, but expressed a willingness to return back home to fix what's been broken. Well, he went good on his word to head Back West and not only restored the old mural, but designed a new one.

I introduced myself to Caché and asked him a little about his process. He showed me his sketchbook which had the image of the familiar Zapatista and chicken characters (as seen on his Silver Lake/Echo Park murals along Sunset Blvd) riding bicycles and holding U-locks. I also asked him about his color schemes, by which he revealed to me he does have his own familiar set of bright background colors. Also, the wall is so coveted by local artists, that other muralists were ready to jump on putting their own pieces there. However, the staff at nearby Orange 20 Bikes took great pains to reserve the wall for a Caché mural redux.

Artist Caché sprays on some familiar-looking tentacles.

Assisting him on his mural was artist Eye One, who actually devised the hooded Zapatista character and himself looked...rather familiar. I asked Caché what his real name was and it confirmed that my guess was correct - Eye One was an old classmate of mine from Marshall High! I hadn't seen him since graduating...uh...19 years ago! When I was the Editor-In-Chief of the school's Blue Tide campus newspaper in Spring of 1989, he was the Art Editor. Now, I'm a community leader in East Hollywood and he's one of the artists that designed one of its most popular murals. How things go full circle. After a long "catch up" conversation, he told me he's stayed local and has been active as a graphic artist for many years. We also have a few post-high school mutual friends, so it's a wonder why our paths hadn't (re-) crossed sooner. He also talked about his art, as well as the idiosyncrasies of his mural pieces - for instance, the arrow on the Zapatista's zapato usually points to the northeast when it's in murals (though the new Hel-Mel mural is an exception, as he discovered).

But hey, it's a small neighborhood, a small town and a small world.

Tear Down This Wall!

The construction barrier for the new L.A. City College parking lot/athletic field along Heliotrope Drive came down on Thursday after being up nearly three years. The diagonal parking appears to remain, though the parking meters have yet to be re-installed.

The 950-space parking lot will be open on Tuesday, September 2 - the start of the LACC school year. Work on the rooftop athletic field, which will feature a track, plus a soccer and softball pitch, will continue for another two months.

Purty.

Although it's Summer, June July August gloom can be a nice thing sometimes, especially in the early morning when you get to see the San Gabriels peek from a layer of cloud cover. This view of Mt. Wilson greeted me as I waled towards the office, so I had to take a snap.

Interestingly, the cutie who gets on the Gold Line at Lincoln Heights/Cypress Park and seems to work near me said something like, "Are you okay?" as I took this. I just briefly explained to her that it looked beautiful. Hey, like the clouds, the ice has been broken. Wish me luck.

Welcome To The Cube

My new domain.

Today is the first day of my new jorb. After several months of unemployment free time, I entered the work force today. Welcome to the 9 to 5. Or rather, the 7:30 to 4:30, although I got to start my first day at 8:30 a.m. Not an easy thing for a person who's kept up "artist's hours" for over a year and a half.

Last month I accepted a job offer as a "Grants Research Analyst" at a company in Pasadena called eCivis. If you really do need to know more about what I do, just email me, as I really don't want this blog to be about *work* per se insomuch as it's about the work experience. Got it? Besides, if I start, say, griping about my job on his blog, I can potentially get into some deep doux doux.

The view from my window:
The structure on the left is the Gold Line Sierra Madre
Villa Station Park N Ride.

The cool thing about my job so far? I work just yards from the Metro Gold Line's Sierra Madre Villa station. Though I drove to work on my first day, I look forward to taking the Red and Gold lines there... from Vermont Santa Monica (VSM) to Sierra Madre Villa (SMV). From East Hollywood to East Pasadena. How bout that?

Construction Time Again

A large construction crane raises a likewise large concrete panel into place at the new L.A. City College athletic field/parking structure. The structure is slated to open just in time for the opening of the LACC Fall semester, the athletic field a number of weeks following that.

Yes, Virginia, There IS an East Hollywood!

Twelve years ago, I got into the community improvement thing partly because I lived through the 1992 L.A. Riots and wondered, "Okay, I'm still here, what should I do now?" and partly because back then, after volunteering for a community cleanup event in Echo Park, I wondered, "Wow, how do I get something like that going in my neighborhood?"

So I started a little community improvement association that year and wondered what name to use to describe the area. I guess I decided to use "East Hollywood" because it's the eastern, non-touristy part of Hollywood, and also that I heard some vague historical reference that this area once actually had that name.

"East Hollywood" was common sense to many and a hard sell for some; a few of the improvement association members bought into the "Anything that's the 'East' is not good" stigma, but I didn't care. Eventually it just grew on me and a semblance of community pride grew around that term. And eventually I organized a neighborhood council with that name.

A few years ago, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority contracted French outdoor advertising company JCDecaux to place street furniture, newsstands, ad kiosks and coin-operated, self-cleaning public toilets near transit stops around Los Angeles, just as they have done in Paris, or more locally, in San Francisco. The Los Angeles amenities either have "Los Angeles" emblazoned on the top of the dark-green structures, or the names of the communities in which they are located. I always thought it would be cool to see an "East Hollywood" ad kiosk, for example.

On Tuesday night, bicycle activist, fellow urban geek and friend Stephen Box gave me a call and told me he spotted exactly one of those over the weekend, on the corner of Hollywood and Sunset boulevards -- yes they do intersect, at a complicated 6-way junction. I got so excited I rode my bike there ASAP and snapped the pictures above.

I hope having those things help put to rest those silly names some people call this community, as well as an overall lack of neighborhood identity. Aside from having a certified neighborhood council, our Councilmember Eric Garcetti's Office recognizes "East Hollywood," there's an East Hollywood Business Improvement District and the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) has an "East Hollywood" project area. One local pizza chain lists their Vermont Ave. location as "East Hollywood." I even saw a newscast tonight that used "East Hollywood" as a dateline for a police incident - okay, not the greatest thing to be proud about, but I'll take it.

The only thing missing? Those wonderful blue community signs that officially designate communities in the City of L.A. There are about 170+ of them, and the EHNC is spearheading the effort to gather the 500 signatures to get East Hollywood an officially-designated community. Within East Hollywood there are the designated communities of Thai Town and Little Armenia - both of which long-deserved - that represent the businesses and cultural institutions of their respective ethnic groups. An "East Hollywood" designation will neither cancel nor downplay any of their designations - in fact many prominent Thai and Armenian individuals and groups support the "East Hollywood" designation - but rather tie them both together into one super-diverse community (joined with many other groups as well). We are also home to "Virgil Village," designated in the late 1990s, which started as a project neighborhood of the Richard Riordan-created Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI) program. But not many people actually use "Virgil Vilage" and the LANI project quickly became inactive after its implementation, and not much happened after the project's local organizer passed away in 2003. There's also a "Wilshire Center" sign in our neighborhood, and no one uses "Wilshire Center" to describe any neighborhood anymore (It's either Mid-Wilshire or Koreatown).

The old East Hollywood also included a large portion of modern-day Los Feliz and was in fact an independent city until 1910. It, along with Hollywood, got annexed into the City of Los Angeles to tap into L.A.'s aqueduct water supply. Hopefully, by 2010 we can celebrate a century of East Hollywood being a Los Angeles community, with an official designation for this neighborhood.